Pre-departure post

27/02/22

Hi everyone!

We’re FemEng in Kenya, a group of nine passionate engineers who will travel to Nairobi this summer. We have successfully secured an agreement with the University of Nairobi to help us organise and lead STEM-related workshops to public schools across Nairobi.

Our aim throughout this project is to educate as many children about basic engineering skills and nudge young girls towards STEM careers, which will hopefully reduce the gender imbalance that exists in such professions. We hope that our passion for what we do will encourage the University of Nairobi to create their own Female Engineering Society, and expand the scope of our project to reach schools across the whole of Kenya.

We’re three months away from our trip to Nairobi and we are already hard at work. Although the idea of travelling somewhere new to spread our passion for engineering sounds fun, there is a lot of pre-departure work (logistics, planning, sponsorship and grant seeking) that has to be done beforehand, and our team is currently working together to make this trip a reality!

So far, seeking sponsorships and grants have been one of our main concerns. We hosted our first ever ‘Taskmaster Fundraising Subcrawl’ social on the 8th February and successfully raised £200. We have also received some small sponsorship worth £200 from two companies so far, and have been selected for the Student Project Fund, receiving a total of £250 worth of tools and components from RS components that will help us continue our project and organise the workshops we will be delivering. It is so promising and rewarding to see that so early in our project, we are being recognized and supported by our peers and companies.

With all the uncertainty of the world and Covid-19 health guidelines constantly changing, if all goes smoothly, we aim to travel to Nairobi for 3-4 weeks starting at the end of May 2022. We check the Covid-19 health updates and any related entry-to-Kenya regulations as part of our daily agenda, and are making notes of the necessary pre-departure vaccinations and documentations we need to prepare.

Although a tricky trip to plan, we continue to work consistently as a team to enable its smooth running. Exciting things lie ahead for sure!